“As part of the business school application process, I met with 6 distinct admissions consultants as I searched for one who was (i) creative yet structured in their approach to the essays, (ii) deeply familiar with the GSB and HBS applications, (iii) willing to give me blunt, honest feedback, and (iv) highly determined to reach a successful outcome. Susie was the only individual of the 6 I spoke with who met these criteria, and, ultimately, she greatly exceeded my expectations.

As a bit more about my background in case helpful, I applied in my 3rd year working in private equity (traditional buyout shop) before which I worked for 3 years in consulting. I have a non-unique demographic background.

I'll keep this targeted and share my highlights in working with Susie:

• Creative yet Highly Structured: I was consistently impressed by Susie's ability to generate creative ways to weave in the many attributes/experiences I wanted to showcase into short yet powerful responses. I'll share a concrete example. For the HBS "Leadership Focused" essay, I'd initially drafted a narrative which focused on an in-depth example of a managerial experience I'd had. Susie viewed this draft as too simplistic in that it only enabled me to share a single experience and a single leadership style. Instead, she proposed I contrast experiences I've had leading within resource abundant environments with those I've had leading within resource constrained environments, while also including learnings I've gleaned from my own set of managers. As a result, her suggestions enabled me to showcase a variety of leadership styles and an ability to tailor my style to whatever the challenge may be. The final product was a significantly more sophisticated narrative that allowed me to share a great degree about my managerial capabilities within one very succinct essay.

• Deep Familiarity with the GSB and HBS Applications: This in my opinion is one of the most important attributes when vetting admissions consultants. It's imperative to work with someone who has actually been on the other side of the process, reviewing applications themselves. Upon initially reading through several of my GSB essay responses, Susie was quick to flag all of the items that were not up to par / not sufficiently tailored to each of the GSB and HBS and followed up with suggestions on how to restructure my responses to be more in line with what admissions would be looking for.

• Highly Determined to Reach a Successful Outcome: From the first session, I could tell Susie had done her homework - she'd looked into each of my extracurricular organizations and had researched my current employer. She came with specific items that had caught her attention that she recommended I incorporate into my application. At various times throughout the process, I would wake up to an email from Susie with a new approach for a response I was struggling with that she'd been ideating on the night prior. And when it came down to crunch time in the final couple of weeks, Susie made herself consistently available, regardless of whether I was asking for a several hour full application review or just wanted to give her a 10-minute call to chat through a random question. From these interactions, it was clear that my application was incredibly important to Susie and that she was highly determined to reach a successful outcome.

In terms of the outcome, I was ecstatic to have created what I believed was the best app I possibly could have assembled. It incorporated a variety of experiences, which conveyed a multi-dimensional individual. And, at the same time, I felt as though my app was very authentic and genuine, which was important to me. In the end, I was very pleased to have submitted the app I created in partnership with Susie and ultimately was accepted to my top choice - HBS - as part of the round 1 cycle! I was thrilled. Huge thanks to Susie for all of her creativity and rigor that went into my application!”

HBS Class of 2027